


Finality

by carmenta



Category: Yukikaze
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-12-01
Updated: 2006-12-01
Packaged: 2017-10-08 02:24:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,845
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/71720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carmenta/pseuds/carmenta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven years after the final battle on Fairy, Jack ties up loose ends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finality

The death certificates arrived on the desk of Colonel Jack Bukhar exactly seven years and four days after the last battle on Fairy. Four days after they could be legally issued.

In a way it was reassuring to know that even in light of all the changes, all the current crises, the military's bureaucracy could be trusted to remain efficient and punctual. Even the internal postal service was predictable; it always took four days for documents to travel from the headquarters in Europe to the Antarctica base. Usually everything would be sent electronically, but sometimes real paper and real signatures were still required.

You couldn't affix medals of honour to an e-mail, after all.

Little bronze plaques on their cheerful red ribbons… Jack had been staring at them for an hour now, and he still didn't know whether he should think of them as a sign of respect or mockery. Eight medals, eight congratulatory notes signed by the minister of defence and one of his generals. Not Cooley, though, even though regulations demanded her signature as the commander-in-chief at the time. Jack suspected that she too had chosen between mockery and respect, and hadn't liked the implications. All that was needed now were his signatures, then the documents could be processed.

Eight badges. Eight death certificates; two thirds of Boomerang Squadron. There were more certificates on Jack's desk, of men who'd been under his command at the end, when attrition had made the FAF's squadron structure collapse and they'd scrambled to cobble together wingmates and flight groups into full units. He hadn't had time to do more than learn those pilots' names and their flight designations, though, so the second stack of documents left him blank. Still, deaths, still lives behind those names, but he hadn't had the time to get to know them.

The eight certificates of Boomerang Squadron's pilots, however, were a painful reminder of those last days.

Crawe had been the first, when the JAM had suddenly shown themselves and the true extent of their infiltration had become apparent. Then Marku, who had only been with the squadron for half a year. Jack had picked him with the squadron's future in mind; a young pilot with leadership potential, who could have taken over after a few years of fight and combat experience. He had died in the first major wave of attacks, and Jack still was in command of Boomerang Squadron seven years later. Even though the squadron now was hardly the same as it had been on Fairy, where they'd been among the best of the SAF.

These two certificates were almost easy. Jack signed them, marked them to be sent to the addresses the men had left as their next of kin's. He was careful when he put the badges into the envelopes with the papers. Marku'd had a wife on Fairy who had survived the escape through the passageway. Maybe she would find closure.

The next, for Ralter, was similar. To be sent to her parents, a final, official confirmation that their daughter had died in a place where mankind should not have gone.

Hindsight.

Jack thought of her annoying, nitpicking questions during mission briefings. His current pilots were never so outspoken. At times he missed it.

Boone's documents were next. Jack signed, tucked it all into an envelope, then looked for an address and found the man's file almost empty. No contacts, only the criminal record. Fraud, felonies… it had been the failed attempt at a robbery that had landed him on Fairy. He'd never protested his guilt. Sometimes, during downtime, he had spoken of his sister, allegedly an actress of some fame, but there had never been any proof that the claim was true.

Jack wavered for a little while, then sent Boone's documents and badge to her, with the request to return them should she feel that she'd received them in error.

Galliardo and Schweiger had no immediate family left to whom anything could be sent. Jack signed nevertheless, his mind heavy with memories. Veteran pilots, on Fairy by their own choice when they'd signed up with the FAF after the permanent military presence on the other planet had been established. Sometimes Jack wondered whether they had ever regretted their decision to leave Earth.

To go to a frontier where every single person could make a difference… it had been Jack's dream, back when he had been young and still capable of such enthusiasm. When the end had come, he'd long known that these dreams carried a price too high to be paid. And still it had hurt to feel his last hopes for a future on another world so mercilessly crushed.

The next certificate was that of Lopez. Another veteran, the oldest and longest-serving active pilot the squadron had ever had. She'd come up through the ranks with Jack, until he had made Major while she was held in place as a pilot by her criminal record. Murder, Jack had found out years after befriending her, when he'd become her commanding officer with access to the personnel files. That knowledge had been the only thing to keep him from promoting her to his second-in-command. Sometimes, afterwards, he'd wondered whether he shouldn't have pushed those concerns aside and focused more on her achievements.

A medal of honour now, and he hoped her parents would be glad to see at least a small symbol of redemption. They'd been disappointed, Jack knew, by their daughter and by the government who had convicted her to a life on another planet. There had been talk of pardoning all those who'd been sent to Fairy as punishment for crimes committed, in the year after the FAF had had to give up the planet and flee back to Earth. But the public had been too uneasy about the idea – criminals who'd lived on another planet, walking freely among them without having served their sentence – that the politicians had soon dropped the proposal. The FAF was re-integrated into the Earth forces, and if anyone found it strange that those who had returned from Fairy tended to be posted to remote locations, they didn't say anything about it in public.

Antarctica hadn't been Jack's choice. Too far away from everywhere else, too hostile an environment. Too close to where the passageway had been. But when he'd decided to stay in the military, this had been the only position offered to him. Too many irregularities in his file, they'd said. Too much indiscretion with a pilot under his command. And so he'd accepted the posting at the polar base.

Even now, seven years later, wrecked planes were still being found in the icy desert, shattered but with their pilots often eerily recognizable due to the preserving cold. Only a fraction of the missing had been discovered, though, and so the bureaucrats had waited for the legally required time until they could tidy their records and close the open files of those whose fate was officially unknown.

Jack reached for the last death certificate. No need to look at the name or at the personnel file to check for next of kin. Rei hadn't had anyone listed, and hadn't seemed to care when Jack had pointed it out to him once. Soon after Rei had returned from his imprisonment by the JAM, Jack had pulled up the file again and had listed himself as the one to be notified should anything happen. He wasn't certain whether Rei had known of this alteration or not. If he had, he either hadn't been bothered or he hadn't cared.

A week after the loss of Fairy, after the medics had managed to mostly identify the dead and wounded under their care, after the squadron commanders had tallied up their losses and after Cooley had tallied up her remaining officers, notifications were sent out. Jack received one, the electronic note carrying his own signature. He couldn't remember seeing the document before – but he also couldn't recall eating or sleeping since returning to Earth. Everything was a maelstrom of muddled communication lines and contrary orders, confused soldiers and frightened civilians. They'd lost the careful hierarchy that had permeated every aspect of Fairy life, and nothing had yet replaced it.

The notification brought it all into cold clarity.

Jack couldn't doubt that Rei had died a week before. Even with his past exploits taken into account, it was simply impossible that anyone could have come out of that alive. But until receiving the notification, Jack hadn't had to truly face the facts. Too many other matters which demanded his attention. Too many things to take care of.

He couldn't recall what he had done after leaving his supply-closet-come-makeshift-office that evening. All he knew was that the next morning he'd woken with a headache, red-rimmed eyes, and the feeling that he hadn't had a minute's worth of sleep without nightmares. The same had happened the next night, after he'd managed to function through the day.

It wasn't going to be like that this time, he knew. Seven years were a long time to come to terms with the facts. He wasn't stressed to the limits and on the verge of a breakdown now.

What had almost driven him over the edge that day hadn't just been Rei's death, even though that had played a major part. Loss of most of his squadron. Loss of what had been his home for over a decade. Loss of his chosen life, in exchange for chaos and uncertainty after the return to Earth.

They'd approached him soon after he'd chosen to stay with the SAF. An offer of retirement, with payment generous enough for him not to need to work again. Too many secrets, too much knowledge about matters the general public shouldn't know so nobody worried needlessly. Just sign a nondisclosure agreement, like so many others. Don't talk to journalists, or to authors like Miss Jackson. Your comrades are already taking this way out. No more worries. They'd posted him to Antarctica, out of sight, out of mind.

Jack stayed. There wasn't much else he could do, now that all plans made for the future had been ruined. No point in retiring to a farm when he no longer had anyone to share it with.

During the first few days, he'd still hoped. He'd refused to accept what he had seen. Refused to acknowledge what his mind already knew: that there was no chance that Rei Fukai could still live. Even Yukikaze couldn't have withstood the JAM, not in such numbers.

Jack opened the folder before him and took out the death certificate. Hesitated, then quickly signed it. Carefully he put the sheets of paper into an envelope, together with the medal on its red ribbon. As an afterthought, he opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out an old-style print photo. He added it to the certificate, then sealed the envelope and put it into the drawer, medal, documents, picture of a fighter plane with a name; all that was left.

And accepted.


End file.
